2026 ACFW Carol Award Finalists in Christian Fiction

Alongside the Christy Awards, the Carol awards share the spotlight as a top honor in the realm of Christian Fiction books. I've been a member of this organization since 2001. Hard to believe 25 years have passed since I began my journey in this crazy publishing world. I've been on quite the rollercoaster.

But hard work definitely pays off, and this award honors the dedication and commitment of these authors who stuck to their guns and produced a story readers and industry professionals love.

Without further ado, here are this year's finalists:

2026 Carol Awards Finalists

Contemporary

Before I Go by Marilyn K. Blair

Independent Author

Editor – Kelly Barr

What the River Keeps by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

Tyndale House

Editors – Elizabeth Jackson and Sarah Rische

Capture the Moment by Suzanne Woods Fisher

Revell

Editor – Andrea Doering

 

Historical 

The Fourth Magi by Bryan E. Canter

Independent Author

Editor – Ed Marlow

The Women of Oak Ridge by Michelle Shocklee

Tyndale House

Editor – Kathryn S. Olson

Last Light Over Galveston by Jennifer L. Wright

Tyndale House

Editor - Sarah Rische

Historical Romance

The Lawyer and the Laundress by Christine Hill Suntz

Tyndale House

Editor – Kathryn S. Olson

The Collector of Burned Books by Roseanna M. White

Tyndale House

Editors – Elizabeth Jackson and Kathryn S. Olson

A Song in the Dark by Kimberley Woodhouse

Bethany House (Baker Publishing Group)

Editors – Karen Ball and Jessica Sharpe

Mystery/Suspense/Thriller

Midnight Masquerade by Elle E. Kay

Independent Author

Editor –Sarah Hamaker

Every Hour Until Then by Gabrielle Meyer

Bethany House (Baker Publishing Group)

Editors – Bethany Lenderink and Jessica Sharpe

Innocence Sold by B. F. Randall

Iron Stream Media

Editors – Suzanne Austin and Larry J. Leech II

Novella

Bible and a .44 (part of the From This Moment On collection) by Robin Lee Hatcher

Independent Author

Editor – Deborah Raney

The Christmas Book Flood by Roseanna M. White

Tyndale House

Editors – Elizabeth Jackson and Kathryn S. Olson

A Star in the West (part of the On a Midnight Clear collection) by Karen Witemeyer

Bethany House (Baker Publishing Group)

Editor – Jessica Sharpe

Romance

Before Grace by Anna Daugherty

Black Rose Writing

Editor - Denise Harmer

Small Town Harmony by Milla Holt

Independent Author

Editor – Sara Turnquist

Hearts in Circulation by Sarah Monzon

Bethany House (Baker Publishing Group)

Editors – Jessica Sharpe and Jennifer Veilleux

Meant for Me by Betsy St. Amant

Sunrise Publishing

Editor – Susan Warren

Romantic Suspense

Failed Protocol by Cindy Bonds 

Scrivenings Press

Editors – Kaci Banks and Susie Waltner

Mistletoe and Malice by Lori DeJong

Scrivenings Press

Editors –Kaci Banks and Elena Hill

I Can’t Hear You by Vikki Kestell

Independent Author

Editors - Cheryl Adkins and Greg McCann

Protecting You by Robin Patchen

Independent Author

Editor – Ray Rhamey 

Short Novel

One Nine by Sara Davison

Independent Author

Editor - Jayci Roek

To Capture a Mountain Man by Robin Lee Hatcher

Independent Author

Editor – Deborah Raney

To Reveal a Reckless Love by Tasha Hackett

Independent Author

Editor – Deborah Raney

Speculative

Forever by Gina Detwiler

Ally Press

Editors – Erin Healy and Kristen Stieffel

Echo Nova by Clint Hall

Enclave Publishing (Oasis Family Media)

Editor – Lisa Laube

Darkfell by Amanda Wright

Quill & Flame Publishing House

Editors – Brittany Eden and Jennifer Frankovic

Young Adult

Sanctified by V. Romas Burton

Quill & Flame Publishing House

Editors - Stephanie Arujo and Jessica Gwyn

This Isn’t Shakespeare by Stephanie Cardel

WordCrafts Press

Editors – Janelle Leonard and Mike Parker

Truth Cursed by Angie Dickinson

Enclave Publishing (Oasis Family Media)

Editors – Avily Jerome and Lisa Laube

Debut Author

To Have and To Hold by Deb L. Brown

Independent Author

Editors - Cassie Mae and KaTrina Jackson

Tattooed Woman at the Well by Terri McAdoo

Redemption Press

Editor – Lesley McDaniel

The Tragedy of Oli Ricker by Phillip Snyder

Living Tome Publishing

Editors – Emily Whitten and Leilah Wright

What Fairy Tales Know About Real Life

I don't know about you, but I think fairy tales often get underestimated.

They're filed away as children's entertainment. Charming, simple, suitable for bedtime. Every now and then, they get dug out to appease the request of a child or to dazzle a group of children in a reading circle at the library.

But personally, I see fairy tales enduring because they're built on something true. Not literally true, obviously. But they map onto real experience and land somewhere deeper. Somewhere our hearts simply recognize. It's why the same core stories keep resurfacing in new forms across generations and cultures.

And it's why I decided to try my hand at retelling a few of them. Magic of the Swan is the first.

What Fairy Tales Carry That Other Stories Don't

Fairy tales deal in archetypes, which means they deal in the most compressed and universal version of human experience.

• The curse that distorts reality and makes the true thing appear false.
• The quest that requires more than the hero initially has to give.
• The love that is tested by the willingness to see clearly when everything conspires against clarity.
• The transformation that costs something real before it gives something back.

These are not just plot devices. They're descriptions of actual human experience, rendered in a form that makes them visible and survivable and meaningful. The person reading a fairy tale about a curse isn't just reading about a magical enchantment. They're reading about every situation in their own life where the true thing has been obscured by something false, where they've had to fight to see clearly through distortion. The story gives that experience a shape, and giving something a shape makes it possible to hold.

That's what good stories do, and fairy tales have been doing it longer than almost any other narrative form we have.

What Faith Sees in Them

When I read fairy tales through the lens of my faith, I find something that looks more like deep pattern.

• Darkness
• Testing
• Transformation
• Restoration

The structure of so many classic fairy tales highlights the idea that things are not as they should be. That something real and valuable can be hidden or distorted or put under a kind of curse. That love willing to pay a real cost has power that other things don't. That restoration is possible even after what seems like an irreversible ending.

I don't think fairy tales are secretly Christian, but I do think they're tapping into something true about the human experience. And the resonance between that and faith is part of what makes both so enduring.

When I write fairy tale retellings, I'm going to do my best to follow the truth that's already present in the original and ask where it leads when you follow it all the way. There may or may not be an overt faith element, but the stories will come from the shared foundation of faith along with the human experience borne of a Creator.

Fairy tales know things. They've always known things. I'm just trying to put my own little spin on them.

Is there a specific fairy tale that has always felt real to you? Something in the tale that resonated beyond the surface of the story? Which one, and what did it touch in you? I'd love to hear about it.

The Mastermind Effect: Why Brainstorming Partners Are Essential

This post is geared more toward those in the Creatives category. You know who you are. Ideas buzz in your mind at all hours of the day and night, and you're constantly looking for things or thinking outside the box at any given situation. If you're a creative person, you already know the particular loneliness of having a mind that won't quiet down.

• The ideas that arrive at eleven o'clock at night when you should be sleeping.
• The project that's been living in the back of your thoughts for months, half-formed and insistent, waiting for the right conditions to become something real.
• The vision you can see clearly from the inside but struggle to explain to people who don't naturally think the way you do.

Creative minds are a gift. They're also, at times, an isolating one.

Over the years of working in a creative field, I've discovered that the ideas themselves are rarely the problem. Most creative people have more ideas than they'll ever have time to execute. The challenge is finding that small, trusted circle of people who can help you see what you're actually building, ask the questions that move you forward, and tell you the truth when something isn't working yet. That makes an enormous difference!

You may have heard this called a mastermind group. I much prefer the phrase finding your people.

Why General Community Isn't Enough

A broad creative community is sustaining and necessary. The workshops, the guilds, the online groups, the conferences. All of it matters.

But there's a difference between being known generally and being known specifically. A large community knows you as a creative person. A mastermind circle knows your particular project, your particular voice, your particular way of approaching a problem. They also know it well enough to meet you exactly where you are when you're stuck.

Anyone can offer encouragement, though. A true brainstorming partner offers insight. And that's far more valuable.

• They can stand at a distance and say, I think the problem is here, and here's why.
• They can ask the single question that reorients everything.
• They can remind you of what you said about your project at the beginning, before you lost the thread, and help you find your way back.

That's what I used to have in the early years of my writing career. Then, through a series of unforeseen circumstances and betrayals, I lost it all. It wasn't until recently that I realized just how deeply the impact affected me.

For years, I struggled to maintain the writing pace and the engagement I had established. With each passing month, the community, the interest, and the support dwindled, until no one even knew I was an author anymore. My days got consumed by reacting to life instead of planning it. I ended up living day to day, without much of a plan, reacting to the immediate without any intentionality or progress toward my goals.

Eventually, I started believing that what I did didn't matter to anyone, because no one was reaching out. No one was asking when my next book was releasing or about any current projects. And instead of squaring my shoulders and first *being* the engagement I needed, I watched life happen all around me. Watched others enjoying and celebrating the community and support they had found. All the while, feeling like an outsider and trying to find my place again.

How to Find The Community You Need

Of course, these relationships develop slowly and can't be forced. For someone like me who tends to move at high speed with my fingers in multiple things at once, it's not exactly what I want to hear. But I need to listen, regardless. I need to rebuild....on several levels. And this is how:

• Start in community.
• Pay attention to who asks good questions.
• Watch those who engage with specificity and care.
• Look for those who shows up consistently.
• Find those who demonstrates genuine interest in other people's work.

Those are the people in whom you want to invest more deeply. And when you're ready to invest your time or attention:

• Be willing to offer before you ask.
• Show up for someone else's creative process before you need them to show up for yours.

The relationships that grow into real brainstorming partnerships almost always begin with you giving first. You need to extend generosity without any expectation of immediate return. And while I've spent years sowing into others, my giving always came with hope attached to it. Hope that someone would return the favor.

It's definitely a fine line to walk, as you ARE hoping to form relationships, but you don't want that to be the condition of your generosity.

I'm definitely still learning. Even though I'm quite outgoing and help others smile when they see me, the intimacy of those sustained and mutually beneficial or rewarding relationships still eludes me...even at nearly 50 years old.

Just remember. Your brainstorming circle doesn't have to be made up of people who do exactly what you do. A novelist and a visual artist and a musician can form a deeply effective creative circle if they share the qualities that matter:

• Curiosity
• Honesty
• Genuine investment in each other's work

The medium is less important than the mindset. Your ideas and passions deserve that kind of company. And so do you.

Have you found the people who understand how your creative mind works? Who can meet you in the middle of a stuck project and help you find your way through? How did you find them, and what has that relationship made possible? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Find Your People: Why Community Changes Everything

Writing is solitary work.

A story gets built inside one person's imagination, transferred through one person's hands, shaped by one person's understanding of character and language and what makes a scene feel true. No one can do that part for you, and no one should try. The solitude is where the work actually happens.

But that solitude is sustainable only when it's held inside a larger community. The writers who last are almost never the ones who go it entirely alone.

I know this from experience, both kinds. I know what it feels like to be connected to a community of people who understand this work from the inside, and I know what it feels like when that connection frays or goes quiet. The difference is not subtle. It's part of what led to my period of silence and lack of new releases.

What ACFW Gave Me

I've been part of American Christian Fiction Writers almost since it began, and the organization has shaped my career in ways I'm still discovering.

The most obvious gift is access to editors, agents, craft education, and the broader ecosystem of Christian publishing. But what has mattered more, in the long run, is the relationships. The authors I've met through ACFW who have become genuine friends. The ones who understand without explanation what it means to be in the middle of a difficult manuscript, or to receive a disappointing editorial letter, or to watch a book release into the world and wonder whether it found the readers it was meant for.

There's a particular relief in being known by people who share the specific aspects of your experience. It doesn't require as much explanation. You can say certain things about the loneliness of a long project, about the doubt that lives alongside the work, about the strange grief of finishing a book, and be understood immediately, without having to first explain why those things are hard.

I never want to take that kind of community for granted.

Why Community Matters More Than You'd Think

Writing community doesn't have to be formal or large to be real. Some of the most sustaining connections I've had in this work have been a single author friend who checks in during a hard stretch, who celebrates a win, who tells you the truth about my work and encourages me.

The authors who have been that for me are among the people I value most in my professional life. And I try, imperfectly and consistently, to be that for others.

Creative isolation is a danger. And you often don't see it until it's already a problem.

You can go a long time producing work without meaningful community and not fully realize what's missing until you find it again. Until you're in a room full of people who understand the work you do and feel something loosen in your chest that you didn't know had been tight. That happened to me. It's part of why the long season away was as hard as it was, and part of why returning to community has been as restorative as returning to the writing itself.

If you're a writer reading this and you've been going it alone, find your people. It will change things in ways you can't fully anticipate from where you're standing. The work is yours alone to do. But you don't have to do it in isolation.

Have you found your community, or are you still looking? What has connection with other creative people meant to you? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

The Fairy Tale That Wouldn't Leave Me Alone

How Magic of the Swan came to be. Some stories arrive quietly and wait to be noticed. Others show up and simply refuse to leave until you do something about them.

Magic of the Swan was the second kind.

The idea of retelling Swan Lake had been sitting in the back of my mind for longer than I can remember. Other author colleagues had done fairy tale retellings, and I always thought it would be fun to attempt one of my own. Fairy tales use the extraordinary to illuminate something deeply ordinary about human experience. But Swan Lake specifically kept returning. Something in the bones of that story — the transformation, the curse, the love that is tested by deception, the question of whether devotion is enough to break what darkness has done — wouldn't let me set it down.

Why Swan Lake

There are more familiar fairy tales I could have chosen. Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White. They've all been retold so many times they've become a genre unto themselves. Swan Lake is less traveled territory in fiction, which was part of the appeal. There was more room to make it genuinely my own.

But it was also the specific emotional architecture of the story that drew me. The curse at the center of Swan Lake is a distortion. It makes the true thing appear false and the false thing appear true, and the one who loves Odette has to find a way to see through that distortion and choose rightly in a moment when everything conspires against him doing so. That's not limited to fairy tales. Human nature has to grapple with that all the time. It's also a deeply theological struggle, if you're inclined to read it that way.

Why the Gilded Age

Or a little bit after. Setting the story in the Gilded Age felt right almost immediately.

The early twentieth century in America had a gilded appeal in and of itself. Glittering on the surface, complicated and sometimes dark underneath. The wealth and the beauty and the elaborate social performance of that era sit alongside labor exploitation and stark inequality in ways that create natural dramatic tension. It's a world where appearance and reality are frequently at odds, which made it a fitting home for a story about a curse that makes the true thing look false.

It also gave me rich historical territory to research, which, as I've mentioned before on this blog, is one of my genuine pleasures as a writer. The Gilded Age has texture and specifics I absolutely love and find fascinating.

The Book Launch

After the long season away from fiction, after everything the hiatus cost and required, putting a new novel into the world was an act of faith in the most personal sense of that phrase. Faith that the work still mattered, that the stories were still worth telling, that the return was real and not temporary.

The response from readers has been amazing. But holding the book in my hands proved the voice was still there, the stories hadn't gone anywhere, and the fairy tale that wouldn't leave me alone had been worth following all the way to the end.

I have a feeling these fairy tales won't leave me alone.

Is there a fairy tale or classic story that has always felt like it was trying to tell you something specific? One that stays with you or keeps coming back? I'd love to hear which one and why in the comments.

Writing for Hire: What Freelance Writing Taught Me

Not every word I write belongs to a novel.

This is something readers don't always know about authors, particularly authors who are building or rebuilding a career. The writing life frequently involves a significant amount of work that never carries your name on the cover, that pays the practical bills while the creative work takes the longer road it always takes.

I do freelance content writing. Blog posts, articles, web copy. All produced for clients across a range of industries, in voices that are not my own, on topics that have nothing to do with historical fiction or faith or the particular world I build when I'm working on a manuscript. It's professional, it's deadline-driven, and it requires a different set of skills than novel writing does.

It has also, unexpectedly, taught me things about my own voice that I'm not sure I would have learned any other way.

What Freelance Writing Actually Looks Like

The practical reality is this: content writing pays consistently in a way that novel royalties do not.

Publishing is often a slow-moving financial ecosystem. Books take years from concept to release, royalties arrive on a delayed schedule, and advances are earned out over time. For a writer who is also running a household, homeschooling teenagers, and maintaining a platform, the gap between what the creative work produces and what daily life requires has to be filled somehow.

Freelance content writing fills that gap. It's not glamorous, and it doesn't scratch the same creative itch that fiction does, but it's honest work that uses the skills I have. I've made peace with that trade-off now, but it definitely took much longer than it should have.

What It Taught Me About Voice

But there was an unexpected gift in this part of my writing career that I didn't like at first. Writing in other people's voices made me better understand my own.

The time I've spent deliberately adjusting tone, vocabulary, sentence rhythm, and level of formality to match a client's brand and audience, has heightened my awareness of how those elements function. I started to notice the choices I'd make consciously that I used to make by instinct. And when I returned to my own work after a stretch of client writing, my own voice feels distinct in a way it didn't before. More recognizable. More deliberate.

It's the rhythm of my sentences. The way I move between the specific and the reflective. The place where warmth lives in my prose and how I find it when I've temporarily lost it. Freelance writing gave me that awareness, and that's made me a more intentional novelist.

Maintaining Balance

Now, there are seasons when the freelance load has been heavy enough that returning to my manuscripts feels harder than it should. It's as if the writing muscles have been used all day for someone else's purposes and have nothing left for my own. Learning to protect the creative work, to treat the novel as a priority even when the client deadlines are louder, has been an ongoing discipline.

I don't always get that balance right. But I keep returning to it, because the freelance work funds the life that makes the fiction possible.

Do you do creative work alongside other work that pays the bills? How do you protect the thing that matters most when everything else is making noise? I'd love to hear how you navigate it in the comments.

Writing Between the Lessons: Homeschooling and the Creative Life

Most mornings in our house, the school day and the writing day start at roughly the same time. But this isn't as harmonious as it sounds.

I've been homeschooling my teenagers for years now, which means that the person responsible for their education and the person trying to finish a novel are the same person, working in the same house, often at the same hours, with competing demands that don't particularly care about each other's schedules. It's a balancing act I chose deliberately and would choose again. It's also, on certain days, genuinely exhausting.

One of the things I've committed to on this blog is telling the truth about what the writing life actually looks like. And the truth is that mine looks like this.

What Homeschooling Takes From the Writing

The most obvious cost is time. Hours that might otherwise go to a manuscript go to lesson planning, teaching, and the general orchestration of another human being's educational life. Writing sessions get interrupted. Creative momentum, which is a fragile thing under the best of circumstances, gets broken by the real and legitimate needs of real people who are more important than any manuscript.

I've had to make peace with a slower pace of production than I might otherwise maintain. Books take longer. The gaps between projects stretch out. There are days when I sit down to write with whatever is left after everything else has been handled, and what's left is not always much.

I've had to learn to write in smaller windows than I'd like, to pick up a scene in the middle and find my way back into it quickly, to treat fifteen good minutes as worth having even when I'd prefer three uninterrupted hours.

What Homeschooling Gives Back

However, homeschooling has made me a better observer.

Teaching requires you to explain things you've understood for so long that you stopped noticing how they work. It requires patience with the process of learning, attention to how understanding actually develops, and a willingness to meet someone exactly where they are rather than where you wish they were. Those are good skills for a novelist to practice.

I've also found that the conversations that happen naturally in a homeschool environment (all the tangents and the questions and the moments when a history lesson turns into a two-hour discussion about human nature and the way things change) feed the part of me that writes.

My teenagers are interesting people with sharp minds and genuine opinions, and spending serious time with them has given me more insight into how people actually think and talk and process the world than I could have gotten any other way.

What Holds It Together

Honestly? Faith and flexibility, in roughly equal measure.

The faith piece is straightforward. I firmly believe this is the right choice for our family in this season, and that conviction steadies me on the days when the balance feels impossible. The flexibility piece is harder won. It means releasing the idea of a perfect writing day and finding genuine gratitude for the imperfect one. It means accepting that this chapter of life will eventually look different, and that the constraints of right now are not permanent.

In the meantime, I write between the lessons. Sometimes in the twenty minutes before the next subject starts, in the hour after everyone has gone to their own work for the afternoon, or the wee hours of the late night after everyone's in bed.

It's not the writing life I imagined when I started, but it might be better, actually, for being so thoroughly rooted in the real one.

How do you manage the creative work alongside everything else life requires of you? I'd love to hear what your balance looks like in the comments.

Three Names, One Writer: Published Under Different Names

If you've gone looking for my books and been confused by the author name situation, you're not alone.

I've published under three names over the course of my career. Amber Miller came first. Then Amber Stockton. Now Tiffany Amber Stockton. Same writer, same heart, same stories. Just a name that has evolved alongside everything else.

I might eventually drop my middle name, but for now, it stays. Still, it gives credence to one of my favorite quotes: "Writing is the only socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." :)

How It Started

When I published my first novels, I wrote as Amber Miller. It was my middle name combined with my maiden name, and it appeared on my earliest books in Christian historical romance. I felt it had an easy, smooth sound to it. A little less clunky than Tiffany Miller.

Then, I married my husband Stuart and began publishing as Amber Stockton, which lasted for the majority of my writing career to this point. Eventually, I realized I rarely introduce myself as Amber, and a lot of folks who met me weren't making the connection.

That led to me using my full name of Tiffany Amber Stockton. That's what I use for fiction now, although there are some nonfiction pieces with just first and last name, and if you search under any of them, you will find me and my books. My full name is on the cover of my most recent work, including Magic of the Swan, which released last month.

The Costs of Changing a Name

The publishing industry doesn't often warn you about the impact of changing your name mid-stride.

Readers who loved your earlier books under one name don't automatically find you under the next one. Search results fragment. Confusion occurs. A reader who picks up a book by Tiffany Amber Stockton may have no idea that the same woman wrote the Amber Miller titles from years ago. Building a readership is slow, careful work under the best of circumstances, and a name change can reset parts of it that take years to repair.

It took a bit of time and perseverance, reaching out to multiple databases and author support interfaces, but I finally managed to merge all 3 of my names online. The changes and the long season away and the return still fit. Even though it wasn't my intention in any way, I'm no longer hiding behind a partial name or a professional abbreviation. I'm simply showing up as the whole person.

If you find a book by Amber Miller or Amber Stockton on a shelf somewhere and you enjoy my writing, that's mine too. The voice is the same even when the name on the cover isn't. I'm still the same writer I was when this started. I've just grown a bit, and my name has grown with me.

Have you ever gone through a season where you felt like you were still becoming who you were meant to be? Where the outside finally caught up with the inside? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

The Day Someone Told Me I Should Write a Book

I didn't set out to be a novelist.

That probably surprises people who know me now, given that I've spent more than two decades writing fiction and have over twenty-five published books to my name. The writing life I have today didn't begin with a lifelong dream or a carefully laid plan. It actually began with a conversation through letters and then emails.

I'd been exchanging both with a favorite author for several years. Her name is Tracie Peterson. If you read Christian fiction, you probably know her. She's one of the most prolific and beloved authors the genre has produced, with a body of work that spans decades and touches readers all over the world.

In 2001, she suggested I join a writer's organization. Despite repeatedly saying, "I'm not a writer," she continued to encourage. So, I did. That led to me attending my first writer's conference in 2002, and we finally met face-to-face. Through a few other email exchanges, I ended up sending her something I'd written, and she shared it with her husband.

At the time, they were acquisitions editors for Barbour Publishing, and they were looking for new authors. Of course, they didn't tell me that! But she saw something in me that I didn't see in myself, and she kept gently pushing.

Even though I had no idea what I was doing, her and her husband's encouragement and recommendation to the publisher eventually led to my first book contract in 2006! Just a few weeks after I turned 30, I sold my first book.

Looking back now, it's amazing to recall what that moment set in motion.

What It Feels Like to Be Seen

There is a particular kind of gift that comes when someone with more experience than you looks at who you are and what you're capable of and speaks it out loud before you've fully seen it yourself.

It's different from a compliment. A compliment is pleasant and often forgotten by the end of the day. This was something else. This was someone whose opinion carried weight, who had nothing to gain from encouraging me, choosing to invest a moment of genuine attention and tell me something true about myself that I hadn't yet claimed.

Writing that book wasn't easy, and it required more learning than I anticipated, which is true of most things worth doing. I made lots of mistakes, and another author friend Linda Windsor, made my manuscript bleed with red revisions. I revised more than I anticipated, but I got it done.

After that contract, I sold another book. And then another. And another, ongoing for the next 12 years.

Looking back now, across more than 25 books and over 600,000 copies in print, I can trace a fairly straight line from those conversations to everything that followed. Tracie said a true thing out loud at the right moment, and that was enough to motivate me.

What This Taught Me About Encouragement

I think about that conversation when I'm around writers who are earlier in the journey than I am now.

I think about how it cost Tracie nothing to say what she said, except a moment of attention and the willingness to speak. Yet, look what it produced in return. That's a remarkable exchange. And it makes me want to be someone who does the same for others, who pays enough attention to see what someone is capable of and says so, who doesn't assume they already know or that someone else will tell them.

Words spoken with genuine intention carry weight that lasts. I know this from a conversation in 2001 that I have never forgotten and never will.

If someone in your life needs to hear what you can see in them, tell them. You may not know for years — or ever — what it sets in motion.

Has there been a person in your life who said something over you that changed your direction? Someone who saw something in you before you saw it yourself? I'd love to hear about them in the comments.